TBILISI -- A Georgian court has sentenced four men on Islamic extremism charges.

The Tbilisi City Court on March 7 found Aiuf Borchashvili guilty of recruiting fighters for the Islamic State (IS) extremist group and sentenced him to 14 years in jail.

Giorgi Khutunishvili and Davit Pirisebiya, who had been recruited by Borschashvili to join IS, were found guilty of being members of a terrorist organization and sentenced to 11 and 10 years, respectively.

The fourth defendant, Giorgi Kuprava, received a suspended one-year sentence after he agreed on a guilty plea deal with investigators.

All four were arrested in 2015.

Georgian officials have said that dozens of Georgian nationals have joined IS militants in Syria and Iraq.

One of them, Tarkhan Batirashvili, also known as Umar al-Shishani, is a battlefield commander in northern Syria.